Travelling and Arriving - the Age-old Journey

Up at four, taxi at five

On Thursday morning in Lincoln, my faithful SONY bedside clock-radio crackled me awake shortly after 4am. Roughly 24 hours later, after a short connection in Doha, my flight landed in Cochin. Taxi, train, tube and planes had brought me halfway around the world to the enveloping warmth of a South Indian morning. 

“Warmth” sums up South India for me. The heat is not stifling, nor oppressive; it’s embracing and comforting. If you fight it and try to be busy and efficient it will taunt you into being irritated, but if you relax into it, it responds like a tropical swimming pool and floats you luxuriously. The other “warm” aspect of being in Kerala is the warmth of the people themselves, who exude a desire to be gentle and helpful, whether or not you’ve met them before, and no matter what the circumstances. When locals call their territory God’s Own Country, it describes the people and their interactions, every bit as much as all the other aspects of the scenery, traditions and culture.

I proceeded patiently through the friendly chaos of the baggage reclaim area and then walked out into a sea of expectant faces. These were the anxious eyes of hundreds of relatives, all coming to meet the warriors, coming home from the war . . .

The expats come home on leave

 Except that in this case it’s the IT engineer back from Germany, or the barrister back from chambers in the City of London, the nurse returning from work in a European hospital,  or the hotel chambermaid, back from working in the 5-star environment of the Gulf.

India is a nation of travellers, moving around the world in search of a better life. They take their traditions and their culture with them, but these are not nomads. They blend their way of life with that of their adopted national identity. In barely a single generation, a new dynastic culture is forged. 

Initially, this way of life stays close to their heritage, but gradually, it merges into a new culture, and in time into a new race. I'm English for many generations, but my roots are in Norman farming, a thousand years ago, before my ancestors crossed the Channel with William in 1066. And for that matter, we all date back to Olduvai Gorge in East Africa, the birthplace of Homo Sapiens.

A few years ago, I was channel-hopping one wet afternoon, and stumbled upon the Welsh language channel of the BBC, which was broadcasting the National Eisteddfod from Wales. I stumbled upon the finals of the children’s country dancing competition. As the children pranced seriously to traditional Welsh melodies, one 11-year old competitor caught my eye. He wore his Sikh turban with pride. Such instances give me hope for the future of a truly multi-cultural society in Britain.

As I left the arrivals terminal, I glimpsed the familiar face and broad smile of Vinu in the crowd. Vinu’s mother is office manager at Mattindia and Vinu – who is studying business and tourism at college in Cochin – works part-time as a private taxi service for Mattindia’s guests. He had driven me around on a couple of occasions earlier this year, and I had swapped copies of my business books on “Negotiations” and “Presentations” for a memory stick of beguiling Kerala music. His courteous friendliness is another kind of Keralan warmth that I find so endearing.

Halfway along the drive back to Mattindia, we stopped for a freshly squeezed fruit juice at a smart café. The dishes on offer included sanitized versions of pizza and Chinese noodles alongside just a couple of Indian classics like Biryani. But no samosas, no stuffed Nan bread, and no dishes from the mouth-watering variety of the Kerala breakfast menu.

This is the downside of multiculturalism. Sometimes, in the race to embrace and adopt new ideas, a culture loses some of its definitive and best-loved elements. In London today, you will find authentic Muslim cuisine on Brick Lane, but you will have to hunt to find the once ubiquitous Cockney delight of Jellied Eels.

Jellied Eels, Pie, Mash and Parsley Liquor - it tastes much better than it looks